Mars Express' webcam helps ESA scientists study high-altitude clouds

"This long-term monitoring has allowed us to detect and measure the extent of dust and clouds over the limb of the planet," said ESA scientist Dmitri Titov.

A series of images captured by ESA’s Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera showcases a limb cloud stretching across the edge of the Red Planet. Photo by ESA

Oct. 17 (UPI) -- A new survey of high-altitude clouds on Mars marks the first time researchers have used the webcam on the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe for scientific purposes.

Until now, the webcam was mostly used for science outreach and education. But last year, ESA scientists upgraded the webcam with new software and began capturing images of the clouds and dust storms forming atop the Red Planet's edge -- the planet's "limb."

The probe's other cameras are mostly designed to make high-resolution observations of small targets, but the webcam is ideal for wide-angle views of Mars' distant horizon.

"For this reason, limb observations in general are not so numerous, and this is why our images are so valuable in contributing to our understanding of atmospheric phenomena," Agustin Sánchez-Lavega, a researcher at the University del Pais Vasco in Bilbao, Spain, said in a news release.

"This long-term monitoring has allowed us to detect and measure the extent of dust and clouds over the limb of the planet, and study changes with a high cadence of imaging," said Dmitri Titov, ESA's Mars Express project scientist. "We will continue to maintain the database with systematic observations from the webcam to provide wide views of atmospheric phenomena."